In pursuit of the enfield
Those of you who are bored by heraldica should probably skip today's post.
So I've been trying, honestly trying, to update the Pictorial Dictionary so that every period charge includes a date, a family name, and a citation. I keep discovering charges I thought I'd covered, going back and re-doing. Given the Absolute and Utter hell my life has been these days, I think I'm making progress.
But I've been stuck on the enfield. It could easily be a Tudor monster, but for the life of me, I can't find a period example of its use. The many O'Kelly websites offer what purport to be examples -- the enfield being the O'Kelly crest -- but follow-ups show that, in every case, the claims are exaggerated.
I've been pointing this out, in my capacity as staff commenter to the SCA College of Arms. And then the most recent LoAR was published, citing a source that said the enfield was indeed found in period: "Heraldry" by Bedingfeld and Gwynn-Jones. (The claim is made again in a later book, "The Art of Heraldry", by Gwynn-Jones alone.)
And yet, neither book gave me a date or a family name. I confess I doubted.
So I wrote the English College of Arms.
And I got a wonderfully gracious reply from one Peter Gwynn-Jones, now Garter Principal King of Arms. In which he admits that, well, he can't track down his sources for the enfield, and it looks as though the statements in his books were perhaps more sweeping than accurate. We still have no evidence for the Tudor use of the enfield, or indeed anything before the 18th Century.
So, while I still don't have the period evidence I want, I have managed to find errors in the works of Garter King of Arms, which he has acknowledged, and which have vindicated me in my claims of non-periodness of the enfield.
Which, bizarrely, was quite the bright spot in my day.
So I've been trying, honestly trying, to update the Pictorial Dictionary so that every period charge includes a date, a family name, and a citation. I keep discovering charges I thought I'd covered, going back and re-doing. Given the Absolute and Utter hell my life has been these days, I think I'm making progress.
But I've been stuck on the enfield. It could easily be a Tudor monster, but for the life of me, I can't find a period example of its use. The many O'Kelly websites offer what purport to be examples -- the enfield being the O'Kelly crest -- but follow-ups show that, in every case, the claims are exaggerated.
I've been pointing this out, in my capacity as staff commenter to the SCA College of Arms. And then the most recent LoAR was published, citing a source that said the enfield was indeed found in period: "Heraldry" by Bedingfeld and Gwynn-Jones. (The claim is made again in a later book, "The Art of Heraldry", by Gwynn-Jones alone.)
And yet, neither book gave me a date or a family name. I confess I doubted.
So I wrote the English College of Arms.
And I got a wonderfully gracious reply from one Peter Gwynn-Jones, now Garter Principal King of Arms. In which he admits that, well, he can't track down his sources for the enfield, and it looks as though the statements in his books were perhaps more sweeping than accurate. We still have no evidence for the Tudor use of the enfield, or indeed anything before the 18th Century.
So, while I still don't have the period evidence I want, I have managed to find errors in the works of Garter King of Arms, which he has acknowledged, and which have vindicated me in my claims of non-periodness of the enfield.
Which, bizarrely, was quite the bright spot in my day.